We sympathize with any New York City seniors who are forced to move from apartments they’ve happily lived in for years — and without compensation. But when the rents they pay are subsidized by the government and the apartments they live in can accommodate larger families, something’s got to give.
That’s the pickle facing the New York City Housing Authority. And it offers a useful lesson about what happens when market incentives are taken out the housing equation.
At a recent City Council hearing, NYCHA officials said they might have to evict as many as 6,500 elderly people who live in apartments with extra space. That would enable the city to accommodate thousands of NYCHA families now squeezed into overcrowded units. All told, general manager Cecil House testified, some 56,000 NYCHA families live in apartments that have room for more people — while 15,000 families are crammed into units that are too small.
Now, folks who are forced to relocate after living in their homes for years might certainly find it traumatic. But it makes scant sense to subsidize, say, a single elderly woman living alone in a four-bedroom apartment while shoehorning a six-person family into a one- or two-bedroom unit.
To fix this, NYCHA might have to resort to forced evictions. How different this is from the marketplace, which has in-built incentives for people to give up space they are not using.
Some seniors downsize so they can pay lower rents. If they own their units, they do it to realize a profit from a high selling price. Or they make the decision to stay put and absorb the costs of the extra space Âthemselves.
Subsidized folks, by contrast, have less skin in the game, and thus less incentive to move.
It’s yet another argument against the distortions created by the overly regulated and overly subsidized housing market we have in New York.
And an argument for restoring a vibrant market where people can find housing they can afford on their own — and with it, the freedom to make their own decisions about whether or not they will move.